


Containment

by glitterburn (orphan_account)



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: F1slash Summer Slash 2005, M/M, key party challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-28
Updated: 2010-09-28
Packaged: 2017-10-12 06:38:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/glitterburn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felipe offers Juan a few home truths.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Containment

**Author's Note:**

> For Emma

The room was warm with good-humoured jokes and ribald comments. One by one, the drivers paired off with comic expressions of horror or hastily suppressed smirks at their good fortune. Juan-Pablo sat on the sofa and watched the proceedings with detached interest, sitting just far enough from Ralf to indicate his separation from his team-mate. Not that Ralf noticed: he was too busy eying up his partner for the evening.

Juan scanned the room slowly and wondered which of those left would pick him. He found that he didn't much care – one cock was as good as another in these situations. It was rare for him to give his heart, and the last time he'd done that, he'd got burned. So maybe this was what he needed – no strings attached sex, a night of anonymous fun…

He frowned. It wasn't going to be particularly anonymous with the rest of the pack looking on. The importance of picking the right partner had been made into an art form. Juan assumed that that was why Rubens had come up with this little game, to ensure that the board was wiped clear and that everybody, no matter how exalted or lowly, would get the chance to meet as equals. Sex was a great leveller, or so they said. Juan wasn't entirely sure that they were right.

He watched vaguely as Felipe Massa got to his feet and walked over the bowl. At the start of the evening, there'd been a breathless silence each time a key was selected, but now that time had worn on, the anticipation was fading. The hum of conversation and the clink of glasses swam around the room, and Juan was half-listening to something that Jarno was saying behind him when he realised that Felipe was staring at him.

"No!" Rubens said loudly, and everyone turned to look.

Felipe stood with his arm outstretched, the key dangling from his hand, or rather, a BMW key-fob with a cluster of keys on it. He looked nervous, and darted little glances between Juan and Rubens as if unsure as to what to do next.

"No?" Michael asked. "You made the rules, Rubens. If Massa took that key, then he gets to play with Montoya. Or was it that you were hoping for a little samba action yourself?"

Rubens scowled at his team-mate. "You think you're so clever. So what if I wanted Felipe for myself? Just because your lover doesn't want you any longer, it doesn't give you the right to be so arrogant and haughty."

"I'd have thought it gave me the perfect right," Michael said, arching an eyebrow.

Rubens muttered and then waved a hand at Felipe. "I'm sorry. The rules are the rules. You must go with Juan-Pablo."

Felipe nodded and moved at last, withdrawing his arm and then looking down at the keys cradled in the palm of his hand.

Juan swung himself out of the embrace of the sofa and crossed the room. "Those are mine," he said, taking the keys. "As you can see, there is more than one key. I suppose you'd better choose one, and then we can be on our way."

Felipe gazed at him, looking very young and very vulnerable. Juan had to resist the urge to grin at the anxious movements that Rubens was making by the table. He was practically broadcasting his distress at being robbed of his young lover, and although Juan sometimes acknowledged Rubens as a friend, tonight he was going to ignore that connection. After all, Rubens was synonymous with Ferrari, and Ferrari was the enemy. Taking little Felipe would hurt Ferrari, for Rubens was if nothing else a very emotional man.

Unlike Michael.

Juan shoved away the thought and jangled the keys before Felipe's nose. "Come on. Choose. We haven't got all night."

"I thought we had," Felipe said with a spark of defiance.

"Not to hang around here, we haven't." Juan rattled the keys again. "Do you want me to choose, since you seem incapable of doing it yourself?"

Felipe glared at him and snatched at the first key as the fob swung towards him again.

They both looked at it: not a car key, nor a Yale key, it was long and slim with four uneven teeth, the metal slightly corroded with a sprinkle of rust. It was not the kind of key that Felipe imagined someone like Juan-Pablo to have in his possession, and so his voice was curious when he asked, "What is it for?"

"Opening something," Juan replied shortly. He flicked the key-fob around so that he held his car key uppermost, and said, "We're going for a drive."

"Where to?"

"You'll see."

They left before the end of the party, Juan pulling Felipe after him so that Rubens was denied the chance to whisper words of comfort and assurances of devotion. Felipe looked back, but followed Juan readily enough, drawn more it seemed by the mystery of the key than of any desire to go into Juan's arms.

Juan settled himself into his car and started the engine. Felipe was slow to open the passenger door and seat himself, and so Juan muttered beneath his breath and floored the accelerator before Felipe had fastened his seatbelt.

"Hey!" Felipe complained as he rocked forwards when Juan braked. "You moron. D'you want to kill me? I didn't agree to that!"

"You're so fucking slow," Juan snapped. "No wonder you're in a shit team."

"Like Williams is so good this year," Felipe retorted. "And McLaren are not that much better. You think you will win with them? I doubt it."

Juan took a corner at high speed. They both felt the wheels on the left of the car leave the ground, but neither of them betrayed a flicker of fear. It was idiotic to behave like this, but this was the only control Juan had now. He'd had no control over his relationship, no control over the way things were going at Williams, and he certainly had had no control over who'd pick him at the key party.

"I can win with McLaren," he said. "Their car improves. It will be better next year. I know it will. Ron Dennis does not suffer fools gladly. He dislikes being humiliated on the track. Yes, next year will be my year."

There was a silence inside the car at that, a silence made all the more extraordinary for the roar of the engine and the scratch of gravel as they turned another corner, and then Felipe started to laugh.

"What?" Juan took his gaze from the road and glanced across at his passenger. "What is it? Why are you laughing?"

Felipe wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. "You don't know what you just said? 'Next year will be my year'. There's a current McLaren driver who's said that very thing many, many times – and it has never been his year. Never his, always somebody else's."

Juan scowled. "DC is a fool. Always the gentleman, never the fighter. That is why he loses. I am not like that!"

"As you say." Felipe snuggled down into his seat, a smug grin on his face. "But you know that you will be going into a team already built around one driver… and that driver is not you."

Juan ground his teeth. "I can take Kimi. I'm better than him. He has no passion, no fire, no fight."

"But he does have some small ounce of humility," Felipe said. "Not much – he is ruthless in everything he does, Nick told me so and he should know – but he has enough humility that he can learn to become a better driver from it."

Juan snorted and shook his head. "Only a backmarker could talk such shit."

"Only an idiot would ignore well-meaning advice," Felipe countered.

A frosty silence descended between them. Felipe looked out of the window at the scenery flashing past, and Juan tried not to dwell on what had just been said. His lover – ex-lover, he corrected himself – had said the same thing as Felipe: that he needed to learn humility and respect. Juan had refused to give it, thinking at the time that it was the kind of speech that Michael made to everybody, and that Michael was supremely arrogant to demand such subservience from those he bedded.

Now he wondered if Michael, like Felipe, had had a valid point.

The BMW slowed as they left the open road and travelled through a suburban area. Housing estates and greenbelt land gave way to older residential areas, and Felipe sat up straight to study the change. Juan watched him as he almost pressed his nose to the window. He was about to shake his head at Felipe's ignorance, but then he remembered that, until a few years ago, he'd been just as ignorant of the English way of life. Driving for Williams had meant a move to one of the nearest big towns to the factory, a town that was also in close proximity to Silverstone, their test circuit.

Juan had chosen Oxford, although he rarely lived in the apartment that had cost him an obscene amount of money for something so small. But it was not to his apartment that they were going: instead, they drove slower and slower as they approached the city centre, prowling past the high Victorian houses with their prim facades and tattered wooden porches. Then came the giant hulk of Radcliffe Infirmary, the lights blazing out across the street at the first of the colleges. Past the Randolph Hotel and around the warren of narrow roads, oblivious to the right of way signs, and they turned onto the High Street.

Felipe watched the silent stones of the colleges: the great archways and the ancient spires that surrounded lush green quads, the imposing black gates and studded wooden doors that kept safe the academe within. It was so alien, so far removed from anything he'd experienced, that he turned to look at Juan-Pablo.

"You live here?"

"Sometimes." Juan drew to a halt, the car parked at a rakish angle across the pavement. "Come on. We're here."

Felipe scrambled out, slamming the door behind him. Juan locked the car and then tossed the key-fob to him. "Now you get to find out what the key was for," he said. "It's just this way."

Felipe followed him along the road. Ahead of him was a gate set into a wall, and he shuffled the keys to find the one he'd chosen. Juan stood beside the gate and waited for him, and so Felipe hurried forwards and slid the key into the lock. He jiggled it a little, and then it turned. He put his hand on the gate, cold metal kissed with dew, and it swung open.

Juan came after him and closed the gate. They stood in silence for a moment, looking at the stretch of rolling green contained within the walls, eyes straining in the twilight haze of a damp English summer. Water flowed somewhere, its murmur almost inaudible against the shivering hiss of the trees. The grass was wet underfoot, and then Felipe jumped as something ran across the middle ground in front of them.

"What the hell is that!"

Juan chuckled and reclaimed his keys. "That was a deer. This is a deer park."

"Deer?" Felipe wrinkled his nose. "In a city?"

"Oxford is a strange city," Juan said as they began to walk through the park. "Everything here is kept in a box. Contained. Like it would be too dangerous if it were let out. Perhaps in the past being clever, being a professor or a student, was unpopular, a threat to normal people."

Felipe thought about this, and kicked at a pebble on the path. "And so the clever keep their knowledge to themselves, and hide away rather than shine. That is sad. But you know, it is not so different for us."

"It isn't?"

"We think we are so good, and yet we will never really know. Not while we are so dependent on our teams. They contain us, yes?" Felipe paused beneath an oak tree and looked at Juan searchingly. "Why did you quit Williams for McLaren?"

Juan shrugged. "Money. They were paying Ralf more than me, and I'm better. Plus they never listened to me about the car, and said that I made too many mistakes."

"They got sick of containing you. And now you go to the most controlling team in the paddock! You will be unhappy there, Juan-Pablo."

"What do you know? You've only ever raced for crap teams, the kind that need accountants to manage them, not race directors," Juan said, rudely.

Felipe smiled. "You forget that I was the test-driver for Ferrari last year. I still am, if they want me. And they do. You see, Rubens is contained, too: contained by Michael, but he in turn is contained by his reputation, by the force of Ferrari. It is not a nice place to be. Rubens might be only a number two driver who begs for scraps from Michael's table, but he has more freedom than you think."

Juan stared at him, and so Felipe said, thoughtfully: "You are very much like Michael. His greatest desire is to be contained, and yet he fights this. His life becomes empty. There is nothing left: no chance, no gamble, no risk. You say you have passion and drive. I say you are like the small child who believes himself to be great only because his friends say so. Learn some humility, and then, perhaps, you will know true greatness."

Juan gave a strangled laugh. "You know what? Fuck this. Fuck this whole thing. I only did it for a joke, not to be insulted by some snivelling brat. You can find your own way back. I don't care what you do. I'm going home."

Felipe watched Juan walk away, and smiled slightly at the slump of his shoulders and the droop of his head. "You will always be contained," he murmured, and then he turned away and continued to walk along the path, hugging himself as the night drew on.

Behind him, the gate clashed shut. He was locked in, but Felipe did not care. There was always another way out: one just had to have the courage to look for it.


End file.
